


Sentiment

by narsus



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Depression, Episode Related, F/M, Introspection, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:42:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the end it had been an entirely selfish gesture and he’s glad that she pushed him away.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sentiment

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Endeavour belongs to Mammoth Screen, Masterpiece, ITV and others.

Of course her death had been unnecessary. Upsetting was the mildest descriptor while traumatising was probably closer to the truth. Beautiful sopranos weren’t meant to commit suicide in police cells. The heroines they played might but the singer herself wasn’t meant to perish for the sake of lost love. Fêted sopranos who married Oxford dons were meant to go into peaceful semi-retirement, occasionally consenting to just one small aria, for the sake of college funds, slowly and steadily growing pump and happy on a diet of spousal adoration and a newly found passion for baking. They were meant to stand as an example, a stark contrast to their roles, of the happy ending that could be realised. An example of blissful domesticity, not because of talent or beauty, but simply because they had found, in amongst thousands of admirers, the one that they admired as much in return. Rosalind Stromming should have been old and grey and beautiful when the grandchildren that Endeavour would never have were finally ready to attend college themselves.

Not that he knew enough about her to make that assumption. He knew of her career, of the purity of her voice, and now, of her unhappy marriage. But he didn’t know much more than that. Celebrity gossip had never quite caught his attention, so much so that he hadn’t even known of her marriage, or, when he thinks about it, her retirement. He probably couldn’t even guess if several of his favourite singers were living or dead. He could make an educated guess but he never knew the finer details beyond someone’s glorious debut at La Scala, or, in some instances, their unfortunate reception by the loggionisti. The stage might be the only reality, and the world outside, the real world, nothing but fantasy for all he knew of it. The truth of which meant that he hadn’t known anything about Rosalind Stromming at all. Any more than he’d known anything about Rosalind Calloway.

None of which explained why he’d tried, stupidly, to kiss her. She’d been unhappy, heartbroken he could now say with certainty, at her husband’s infidelity and no amount of juvenile adoration could have changed that. Miles Percival had loved her, or at least a version of her, a role she’d played, pretending to be happy. Which didn’t explain his own actions. Perhaps he’d wanted to save her, but then she’d hardly have been saved from anything through his pathetic advances. And, in all honesty, he can’t quite fool himself into supposing that he’d been thinking of her at all. He’d fallen in love with her voice, her passion, her various roles. He hadn’t really known the first thing about her as a person. She’d been a conduit for the music. He’d probably only loved her a little more than his record player.

Of course he might blame it on the moment but it seemed too much like shoddy police work to draw conclusions like that. Correlation was never, necessarily, causation and he’d be a fool to think otherwise. It was impossible that he’d loved her, not because of some deficiency in himself, but simply because he hadn’t known enough of her to commit to so ardent a feeling as love. He adored her voice, her stage voice at least, but that wasn’t nearly enough justification. Which left him with the improbable, at least so he tried to tell himself, which was, nonetheless the truth. It had been far less about her than it had been about him, and a fruitless grasping at something, anything, that might thaw the dull ache where, figuratively speaking, he might once have placed his heart.

He hadn’t tried, and failed, because he wanted to save her from her torment. He hadn’t done it out of heartsick longing. He hadn’t even made his failed attempt out of sheer opportunism. Instead he’d been reaching towards anything that might remind him of long forgotten warmth on a cold Oxford morning, of sunlight catching on blonde hair, just before it had illuminated an apologetic smile, and the blood rushing in his ears had drowned out anything else that might have been said. If she hadn’t pushed him away he would have been just as bad as her husband. If she’d welcomed his advances, no matter any high-minded reasoning, he’d have been betraying her as well. He can’t even honestly say that, were Susan herself to come back to him now, he wouldn’t simply be chasing the feeling of peace and contentment that she’d robbed him of with her departure. He’d tried, and thankfully failed, to capture the attention of Rosalind Stromming because he’d hoped to recapture that feeling, of a time and place long gone. He’d done it for selfish reasons, for his own wounded heart and nobody else’s, and that was no reason to kiss anyone at all.

Perhaps then, even in the throes of undergraduate passion, he’d been found out. Perhaps that was why Susan, now properly Susan Fallon had walked away, why Rosalind Stromming had pushed him away, why Alice Vexin’s response was to walk away the very next day. The last misfortune is, sadly, the only one he can muster any real passion about, and even then, all he feels is a sharp bitterness that burns out just as easily as it kindles. Alice had said he wasn’t ready yet to love anyone, but he knows, with a fatalistic certainty that she’s wrong. It’s not that he can’t relinquish his grasp on the past. It’s that he can’t remember what it was to feel anything like that at all. The intensity of feeling has faded so far that it’s like trying to sketch a sunset that he’s along forgotten.

In the end he’d tried to hold an illusion in his arms and thank goodness that the flesh and blood woman had fostered no similar delusions. Perhaps then Alice had been right. He was chasing an illusionary, utterly selfish, dream. The idea that he could, somehow, if the stars were favourable, and real life just a little bit more like the drama on a stage, recapture something now lost, something irreplaceable. Something that probably hadn’t been meant for him in the first place.

**Author's Note:**

> “Your only reality is the theatre. Anything else, what civilians call the real world, is nothing but fantasy and I bloody well won't let you forget it.” Is the quote paraphrased from the 2004 film _Being Julia_.


End file.
